Christopher Ricks

“For a display of paranoid megalomania, it would be hard to beat the opening of 'Like a Rolling Stone'.”

“In the beginning was the pun.”

“There is no more important or extensive or difficult or rewarding body of criticism in the English language than Johnson's.”

“What a work of art is, is not separable from what it may be for.”

“The duty of a critic is not to supply a consumer's guide.”

“The praise of a work of art has to be not only true but just.”

“The study of literature is the study of the life of the mind.”

“The price of literary glory is perpetual vigilance.”

“T. S. Eliot is the most important poet of the twentieth century.”

“Milton's greatness is in his management of the sentence.”

“The real argument for Tennyson's greatness is the consistently high quality of his verse.”

“For Wordsworth, poetry was a vehicle for revelation.”

“It is a part of the critic's business to try to see the work of art in the light of the artist's intentions.”